One day my sister saw a dirty man in rags, who she thought was a beggar, approach the house. She ran inside and told mother who instructed her to have nothing to do with him because they couldn't afford to take in all the beggars. The man didn't go away so mother went to see for herself. When she saw him, she broke out in tears and ran to his aid because she realized that is was her daughter's husband. He had escaped from the infamous Bataan Death March and made his way Los Baņos. His name was Santos Duenas, and to this day his wife has never received a pension from the U.S.
Remember the story about the girl I told you my mother raised even before she married my father? Well her name was Zoila. She went on vacation to visit some relatives in Batangas and the story goes that she was already going to be in trouble with my mother because she didn't return home when she was suppose to. She knew she would get in trouble because my mother would know that she had done something wrong so she eloped with Santos.
When Santos appeared at our house in Los Baņos we had to hide him and mother knew that she had to get him back to Batangas where he would be safer with his wife and family. She took him on an arduous journey, by foot and horse, over the Mount Makiling to Batangas.
We learned that father's ship had been sunk in the harbor at Mindanao and he had been taken as a prisoner of war to Camp O'Donnell in Capas which he had helped build. My mother and sister visited him there. The conditions were extremely harsh at the camp and many men died of cholera and malaria. The daily ration of food consisted of a handful of rice, a thumb-sized piece of pork floating in water and three pieces of kangkong, a leafy vegetable. They were given one can of water to wash themselves with. Father learned Japanese and he was put in charge of the rice detail. He was given a patch with his name written in the Japanese for his name and the title for general officer: Marusero Parubi Shokan. The rice detail was permitted to leave the camp to go to a mill town near the camp to pickup the rice. He was careful to arrange the detail to leave the camp when the POW's family was nearby so they could see each other. The Japanese gradually released some of the Filipino POWs who pledged their allegiance to Japan. My father was let out and came to live with us, but kept a very low profile during the war. He was given a plot of virgin forest to clear on a hill near Mount Makiling to grow rice and vegetables which he tended during the occupation.
I didn't go to school during the Occupation. None of my brothers or sisters went either. The Japanese controlled the schools so none of us believed there was any reason for us to attend classes then. I spent much of the war working on our land on Mount Makiling. I would get up at 5 a.m. and hike up Mount Makiling to begin a day's work at about 7 and wouldn't return until sunset. Because it would be late and dark when I returned, and I would be tired, my father made a tree-house for me. He found a large santol tree, nearly as large as a three-story building, and placed tree trunk that he had split in two in the branches. Then he made a simple roof and a way for me to climb up the tree [santol trees have lots of branches making them a relatively "easy" tree to climb]. I would spend the night in this santol tree-house holding my three-foot long bolo and a banga (a bolo is a machete commonly found in the provinces of the Philippines; a banga is a club made from the black, heart wood of a certain palm tree) which I could use to protect myself if I was attacked by the Japanese soldiers. When I lay there at night, I could see the moon clearly because there were no other trees too close. I could hear the whispering of the wind as it pushed at the branches and their leaves, the water flowing over the stones in a nearby stream, and the sounds of insects, animals, and birds. Usually I was so tired that the night passed by peacefully.
What few motor vehicles existed in Los Baņos were confiscated by the Japanese. Everyone usually took the caribela(a horse driven coach) or walked to where ever they were going during that time. Otherwise they would take a calesa(another horse-driven coach) or bangka if they were going somewhere accessible by Laguna de Bay. People could take the LTB bus or the train if they were going somewhere further like Manila.
I carried a knife in my purse during the war for my protection. I was on the bus and the bus stopped at a Japanese checkpoint. A soldier was checking everyone for weapons and I was scared to death that he would find my knife. I thought they would take me away and kill me if they found it. When the soldier opened my purse he didn't look through it very closely because he gave it back to me and moved on. I was extremely lucky.
One day I saw my high school art teacher, Mr. Fidel Ongpauco, walking on the street in Los Baņos. I found out that he was a guerrilla, and I began to get information from him that I would sometimes pass on to guerrillas in the mountains. There were different guerrillas though, and one time I was in the mountains and I heard horses galloping nearby. As they came closer, I heard someone yell, "don't look Leonie, so you don't see anyone's face."
After the Japanese had occupied our barrio, I told a neighbor who was hired to cook for the Japanese, "here take this poison and put it in their food." My sister Rose was hired as a cook by a Japanese captain, who incidentally was a graduate of Harvard! She only worked for him for a few weeks because one day she asked him, "How would you like your gurami [Tagalog term for a certain fish] cooked?" Gurami was an underground term at the time used for guerrillas so she was fired. We needed rice and sugar so I had to work for them too, but I was laid off also. I worked in the production of castor oil that we had learned was used for their airplanes. Instead of weeding in the fields, I would lay down underneath the plants and read old editions of the Saturday Evening Post that my cousin had saved from before the war. In the warehouse where we were told to pound the seed just to crack it, I would pound on it and say over and over in a low voice, "I wish you die, I wish you die." One of my co-workers reported to the Japanese that I was a rebellede and I was fired. We survived in those times by selling produce, shrimp and dulong in the market near Junction [an important intersection in Los Baņos] or in the neighboring town of Bay.
If someone ever visited our house, usually soldiers looking for their families, the "bamboo army" would come and take my mother away. She was subjected to questioning about the visitor and had to sign something as a guarantor saying when the visitor would leave as soon as possible.
The Japanese would also requisition labor from us. A man from every household had to report for labor in shifts, but my oldest brother, Junior, would go instead of my father. Men increasingly stopped returning from the labor camp when the U.S. advance was coming closer near the end of the war. It was rumored that they were killed. We could hardly believe the stories, but we knew it was possible.
Once when I went to visit my grandmother in Santa Rosa, my cousins and I had to wait in line to use a mill for the palay (unhusked rice) we had harvested. The mill was next to a school compound that we later learned had been turned into a Japanese garrison, and we could hear cries and pleading of people from the other side of the wall. There a lot of MAKAPILIS in the Barrio Aplaya where my relatives lived. They knew we were children of a U.S. Army man so we had to be careful about everything we said. Even my grandfather kept his distance from us, but my Aunties and my cousins made us feel at home.
The Japanese also setup zonas. Once they were looking for guerrillas amongst the townspeople they gathered all the men and made them sit under the scorching sun at Batong Malake (a barangay near UP Los Baņos where the Japanese were utilizing some of the buildings) where they conducted a roll call. Then they marched them to UP Los Baņos where they were put in small buildings for nine days without food and only a very little water to get them to talk. The people were told that the families of any man who did not report for the zonas would be killed. My father was able to help the others that were housed with him based on his experience having survived at Camp O'Donnell. I think it was on the ninth day, that the Japanese let my sister, Rose, go and feed the men. She had learned to speak some Japanese from the time she was a cook for the Japanese officer.
My father was once protected by the mayor, I can't remember his name now, because he knew my father and they were friends. This same mayor was killed by the Japanese later, but I don't know what were the particulars. So many people were killed during the war.
Sometime during the rice harvest, I think it was in November, 1944, I was walking through a cane field on my way to the mountain when I saw a plane with dark smoke trailing from it. It was sputtering as if it had engine problems and I noticed it was an American plane. It crashed into the mountain and burst into flames. Before long the Japanese were rushing to the area of the crash in swarms. I learned that the pilot was rescued by a Filipino who had seen the crash. He lived in one of a handful of homes that were located on a plateau nearby and was busy farming when the plane crashed. He carried the pilot to the safety of a cave and then rested at a pond. He had a pack of American cigarettes in his pocket and took one out to smoke. Japanese soldiers found him and questioned him, but somehow didn't make the connection between the cigarettes and the pilot so they moved on. The soldiers questioned me too. I had just harvested some bananas that were only half ripe and the took them from me but otherwise left me alone (I probably got even with them after they ate those half-ripened bananas), but other people weren't so fortunate. The last I heard, the pilot was rescued by guerrillas who took him away. The Japanese gathered the men from the households that were located on the plateau, which included the farmer who had come to the aid of the pilot, and took them away to kill them before setting fire to the houses. The families were now husbandless and fatherless.
By this time, my father had built us a cabin on the mountain where we could sleep at night and where we could store our harvest. We had a neighbor who lived in a bahay kubo (a hut). Sometime within the week that the airplane crashed, the Japanese burned down the bahay kubo and the old man who resided there was never seen again. I think the only reason our cabin was spared was because it was concealed by sugar cane stalks.
The internment camp at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila was overcrowded so the Japanese decided to transfer the prisoners to a new prisoner compound* at the Los Baņos School of Agriculture. Today these same fields are often used for the Philippine ROTC and CAT (Citizens' Army Training) exercises. Sometimes I could see the internees when I passed by on my way up the mountain. They were only wearing undershirts, shorts and sandals. Their bodies were emaciated and their skin was dark. I could see they were getting skinnier and skinnier. There was a time when they were reduced to eating wild grass roots. I did what I could to help out one prisoner, Mr. Ham [Hugh Mack Ham], who was an American businessman. His wife was a Filipina named Ester. Ester's neighbors were the families of soldiers who new my father so when she learned that the internees were taken from the city to UP Los Baņos she contacted my family for help. Ester was able to visit her husband, but no one else was. Whenever I came down from the mountains, I would go to the gate of the camp with some fruit. I would tell the Japanese soldier guarding the gate, "This-one-is-for-you, this-one-for-Mr.-Ham. Do-you-under-stand? Do-you-know-Mr.-Ham?" He would eagerly respond, "yes, yes" bowing his head each time and smile. I know Mr. Ham got the fruit because he found me after the war. He wanted to take me to America, but I was in medical school at the time studying to be a doctor so I could not go. [*In May, 1943 over 2000 men, women, and children; primarily Americans, along with British and British Commonwealth subjects, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish and Italian internees were transferred to the compound in Los Baņos that the internees themselves constructed on the sporting fields between the permanent buildings].
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